The jet engine was still only a few years old when Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier. Just a few years after that, NACA and the US Air Force were looking at what design was necessary for sustained supersonic flight. One such attempt was with the X-3 “Stiletto” beginning in 1952.Continue reading Pointy On Both Ends

The day was June 20, 1973, the airplane was the US Navy’s Fighter of the Future, pre-production F-14 Tomcat #6, and the story is riveting. While test firing an AIM-7 Sparrow missile underneath the future Top-Gun star, something went terribly, terribly wrong. Continue reading A ride from Hell in an F-14 Tomcat

Between 1979 and 1982 NASA actually flew this bizarre aircraft. The AD-1 was a proof of concept test plane for a theory that an oblique wing that pivoted up to 60 degrees about the body of the aircraft would provide much more efficient operation for supersonic aircraft, particularly the still-a-dream supersonic transport.